Since I would send already budgeted money

to the credit card every three days or to bring the balance to $0, I wouldn’t increase debt or even see a monthly bill (which I never would do). Of course, if no monthly bill, then how could my CC effort have any effect on my FICO score?

The great unknown is it’s impact on the FICO score, which former Evil Financial Empire employee (her words) Kathryn mentions that the impact will be slight. Kathryn, I save your email and will look at it again in five or so years when I go to get a home loan. Great advice!

On balance, having a snake in my hand that is looking for ways to bite me (Kathryn’s words again) in exchange for little positive impact (maybe even negative impact) on my FICO doesn’t sound like a good deal.

Instead of guessing, the better approach, per Kathryn, would be to approach a mortgage lender when I have the savings and not debt, and tell them I wanted to strengthen my position to get a really good loan package at some point in the future.

The last time I learned of my credit score was April 2010, and I think it was 710. I got a free copy of my credit report yesterday and it has one negative item (A Macy’s charge card where they never sent me a 2003 bill for $70 that I learned about way too late) and I have 31 accounts in good standing going back to September 1993 (Creditor’s loved me because they always made good money off me). It’s spooky to have my credit history going back almost 20 years (Is that normal? I heard most items drop off after ten years, so why does my credit report go back 20 years?)